By Andy Dolan
24th May 2010
Men have long maintained that they're better at mastering technology than women are.
However, there's one field where they appear to have fallen far behind.
Research shows that suspicious wives are almost twice as likely as their husbands to spy on their spouse's online activities.
This suggests that, when it comes to snooping on their partner, they are quicker to embrace the power of computers and mobile phones.
According to the survey of almost 1,000 married middle-aged couples, 14 per cent of the wives secretly read their husbands' emails, while 13 per cent admitted poring over their beloved's text messages.
Of the husbands questioned, only eight per cent admitted reading their wives' emails, while seven per cent had checked text messages sent to their partner.
Researchers from the London School of Economics and Nottingham Trent University asked the couples questions about internet use to investigate what role the web and text messaging plays in maintaining intimate 'offline' relationships - and whether its use was a cause of conflict between partners.
The study appears to show that some women may develop their IT skills simply to improve their surveillance techniques.
Dr Ellen Helsper, a lecturer in the media and communications department of the LSE, who led the study, said: 'Our findings showed that there are surprisingly high levels of surveillance.
'One of the surprising findings was that surveillance was undertaken more often by wives than husbands. This contrasts with research that suggests that women are less technologically skilled than men.
It seems that they are able to overcome these barriers when they feel their relationship is at stake.'
The study, entitled 'Netiquette within married couples', analysed data from 940 couples with an average age of 49 who had been married for an average of 19 years.
It found ten per cent of couples admitted that each had secretly read their partner's emails. Ten per cent of couples admitted to reading their spouse's text messages when his or her back was turned.
Ten per cent of women and six per cent of men had also checked the browser history of their partners. In a further four per cent of relationships, both said they had.
The findings were reported in the American journal Computers in Human Behavior in March.
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